What Nation Besides Israel Is Killing Gaza’s Innocent Palestinians?
“Somebody better investigate soon.”
That’s a lyric from Bob Dylan’s “Oxford Town,” a 1962 song deploring the relentless murder of Black people and civil rights activists in the Deep South. The line mocks the refusal of racist officials to punish the white murderers, instead cynically covering up atrocities by promising do-nothing “investigations.”
Six decades later, the depraved ethic of “Oxford Town” is allowing Israel’s indiscriminate carpet-bombing of Gaza, wreaking horror at a genocidal pace on the Palestinian people. So far, more than 35,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered, with another 77,000 horribly injured—and two-thirds of those killed have been women and children. Hundreds of thousands more face imminent starvation because their homes, cities, and entire economy have been blown to smithereens. Adding to the depravity, Israel’s fanatical ruler, Benjamin Netanyahu, restricts humanitarian aid from reaching the Palestinian people.
Yet our government is Netanyahu’s biggest international apologist and enabler! Oh, for sure our officials condemn each of his atrocities, loudly demanding “a full investigation.” But even when investigations happen, they produce no punishment—and no change in our shameful open-ended policy of annually supplying the billions of U.S. dollars and mega-weapons he’s now using to exterminate the innocent men, women, and children of Gaza. Thus, the horrendous 2,000-pound bombs he’s dropping on Palestinians bear our U.S. flag.
President Joe Biden said he’s “heartbroken” by the relentless killing of innocent Palestinians, which he called “unacceptable.” Then he accepted it! Even as he expressed anguish, Biden authorized a shipment of another $18 billion worth of U.S. bombs and jets to Netanyahu.
Washington keeps sending killer weapons to Israel. Then, when they’re fired at innocent people, we piously demand useless investigations and request (pretty please!) that Netanyahu “bomb responsibly.” Gosh, why isn’t that working?
Where Is George Orwell Today? Texas!
If you think the GOP’s Congress of Clowns represents the fringiest, freakiest pack of politicos that MAGA-world can hurl at us, you haven’t been to Texas.
It’s widely known, of course, that Senator Ted Cruz, Governor Greg Abbott, and most other top Republican officials here are obsequious Trump acolytes. Thus, Texas is infamously racing against Florida to be declared the stupidest, meanest, most repressive state government in the United States, constantly making demonic attacks on women’s freedom, immigrants, voting rights, public schools, poor people, and so on. But I’m confident Texas will win this race to the bottom for one big reason: GOP crazy runs extraordinarily deep here.
We have a county-level layer of ultra-MAGA cultists constantly pressing the state’s far-right officials to march all the way to the farthest edge of extremism—then leap into absurdity. Therefore, the party officially supports the abolishment of labor unions, the elimination of the minimum wage, the privatization of Social Security, the legalization of machine guns, and . . . well, you get the drift. Now, though, local mad-dog Trumpers are pushing their party straight into the abyss of autocracy by declaring war on H-E-B.
What’s that? H-E-B is a Texas chain of supermarkets beloved in communities throughout the state. Beloved, because the stores fully embrace the rich diversity of all people in our state, have affordable prices, value employees, and support community needs.
Nonetheless, county Republican zealots screech that H-E-B violates their party ideology by accepting food stamps, opposing privatization of schools, and (the horror!) sponsoring some LGBTQ+ pride events. So they’re demanding official condemnation of the grocery chain for—get this—“advocating for policies contrary to the Republican Party of Texas platform.”
Yes, violating the party platform is to be criminalized. It’s the reincarnation of George Orwell’s 1984: Be MAGA . . . or else.